Victoria's Super Bowl success

by Dan Miller

  Victoria's Secret titillated the nation's eyeballs when it used a pricey 30-second spot on this year's Super Bowl to promote an upcoming fashion show of scanty lingerie on its web site.

   But the real fashion show may be just starting: Expect more one-time web spectaculars as more advertisers learn to use the reach of old media to promote the new. Broadcast.com, the Yahoo!-owned provider of audio and video Internet content that hosted the Victoria's Secret show, hopes to emerge as a leader in the splashy web event.

   And yet this was not what Monday morning quarterbacks would have been thinking on Feb. 4, the day after the show. Everyone harped on what went wrong with the show, on the estimated 1 million viewers who couldn't get onto the VS web site to watch it and on the delayed downloads and jerky, hazy images of teddy-clad supermodels who greeted those who did.

   The technological snafus, however, were washed away by the marketing results. "In one form or another, we estimate about 1 billion people were exposed to the Victoria's Secret brand through this event, including all the attendant publicity," says Anne Marie Blaire, senior manager of the Victoria Secret's Web site (www.VictoriasSecret.com). "We were very pleased to get that kind of exposure."

   The bottom-line value of that kind exposure, combined with additional sales that were generated by the event, lead observers to figure that Victoria's Secret has more than recouped the $4 million it spent to promote and produce it, though the company will not divulge exact figures.

   According to Sherry Manno, director of corporate communications at Broadcast.com, despite the difficulties 1.5 million people logged on for the event. As far as anyone knows--these things are not tracked scientifically—it was the largest commercially promoted one-time online event to date.

   And those 1.5 million visitors weren't the end of it. Broadcast.com says another 4 million visitors have watched the archived webcast since the fashion show. Which means the supposed disaster has so far brought 5.5 million customers a mouse-click away from the Victoria's Secret online catalog.

   Beyond pure sales, the event was a marketing bonanza for the lingerie company, launching its Web site with a very big splash. Says Manno: "Who wouldn't want 2.5 million people at your store, even if 1 million of them didn't get in?"

   The site came away with another valuable commodity. For weeks before the event, anyone visiting Broadcast.com saw a teaser promotion for the upcoming Victoria's Secret spectacular. People interested in receiving news about the event or an electronic copy of the VS catalog was asked to leave their e-mail addresses. By the day of the event Broadcast.com had collected some 70,000 names.

   And the names keep trickling in; the web broadcaster estimates it now has close to half a million, each with a market value of roughly $2.20.

   Collecting names is an integral part of Broadcast.com's business model, says senior account executive Tim Sanders. "With this information-capture model, we're going to give you a different reason for doing an event. If you put out content people like, they'll reward you with information you can really use."

   Victoria's Secret agrees. "We'll do it again next year, again with the goal of reaching the biggest audience possible," says Blaire.

   "There's going to be a lot more of this at various scales," says Sanders. "Some will have 15,000 viewers, some a million." He anticipates interest in content-oriented events. An online record store, for example, might broadcast a Celine Dion concert, then sell the CDs. "I've got about six deals baking right now. Expect to see a lot of bigger events happening in the summer/fall time-frame."

   But analysts are less wowed. "I don't expect to see that many other events of this magnitude," says Mark Johnson, senior analyst with Jupiter Communications. "In terms of marketing, how many other retailers are going to drive that kind of audience? Not many."